Pittsburghers know that the times are out of joint. Somehow they're expecting the prosperity to blow up in their faces.
Fortune Magazine, 1941

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

The day hope abounds

I still stand by my own version of a taxonomy of Pittsburgh voters I put up earlier in the year. I thought I was pretty insightful... of course it wasn't anything new.

Below is an ad for the Republican candidate in the 1977 general election. But if you read the bottom part of it... it uses some different labels, but pretty much breaks down the Pittsburgh electorate the exact same way. It also has a very specific quantitiative prediction on how the Republican candidate could win. . According to this the voter breakout was:

Hard Core Democrats (the machine faithful)

Hard Core Republicans (hopeful at last)

Closet Republicans (the Democratic Disenfranchised)

Independent Democrats (It's the man, not the party) [the man? even for 1977 that's iffy]

Interesting looking back at that. I presume that local Republican money paid for that ad. At the time Cosetti was the odd man out running as the Republican, but he had actually been a Democrat and the City's treasurer under Flaherty not long before this election. The numbers are obviously different than what will be true by the end of today. The ad presumes 150K folks would cast ballots in that election.. it will be more like 40K today. The point though is much like many an underdog wants to make today... that there is at least a mathematical possibility that they could win. 1977 was a bizarre election and so it was conceivable that the Republican could have won... with Foerster and Caliguiri effectively splitting the Democratic Party vote it's actually amazing that the Republican didn't win... but of course Dick Caliguiri would win as he would two times more.

hey that "weights and measures" thing is a good gig, if you can get it. Keeps the purveyors of chip chopped ham on the level.

I guess to split our citations: what effect, if any, did the closing of the downtown markethouse have on that year's election? Similar thread of indirect significance, i.e., the role of government in downtown development?